


the logic of the sword

by illumynare



Category: Destiny (Video Game)
Genre: Gen, also a bit of cussing, because she is my precious cinnamon roll, mild ickiness/body horror like you'd expect from the Hive, mostly just a lot of FEELINGS ABOUT ERIS
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-10
Updated: 2015-09-10
Packaged: 2018-04-20 01:38:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,318
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4768718
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/illumynare/pseuds/illumynare
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Eris Morn remembers. (The Hive does not forget.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	the logic of the sword

As she writhes in the darkness, as the worms eat away at her light her face her eyes, Toland whispers to her: _Let me give you a gift, Eris. Let me tell you about the power in the logic of the sword._

* * *

Eris Morn remembers her first life.

Not all Guardians do. The Light that summons them back from the darkness of death is not kind to human memory. Eris remembers fragments, and counts herself lucky: breath sighing into her hair, as her mother hugs her close. The light of the Traveller, glowing in the sky. Bio-mechanical wings that fuse to her arms with nanotechnology and let her fly up, up into the light.

Eris was a child of the Golden Age. She died (somehow) before the Darkness ever touched her world. She remembers when there was no fear in the world, when humans were all but gods, and maybe that’s why she’s bold enough to follow Eriana-3 into the darkness of the Moon.

Her mother told her a story once, about a boy with glorious wings that let him fly to the sun, but in the end those wings were only made of wax. When he flew too high, the wax melted. The feathers dropped off his arms and he fell.

Eris remembers that story, deep among the shadows of the Hive.

* * *

Toland forces the worms into her mouth. She asked him to do it, but now she fights him, because it is death death darkness PAIN RUIN WRONG and crawling down her throat.

He doesn’t listen to her whimpers, he binds her wrists with chains of darkness, because Toland is a mad bastard and they knew that going in. They just didn’t know how terrible was the Darkness that had driven him mad.

Toland croons to her: _The sword binds wielder to victim. It binds life to death. And when the binding is done—the sword remembers._

* * *

Eriana-3. Disciple of the Praxic Warlocks, marked by the Cormorant Seal. She took pains to write a confession before they set out.

 _If I transgress in your eyes,_ she said, _I ask for your forgiveness._

There’s a terrible purity to all the Exos—forged for a single purpose even before the Light resurrected them—but to Eriana most of all. Her vambraces glittered with light and honesty. And fury, but there are no Guardians left who don’t burn with hatred now. The Darkness has taken too much.

Eriana befriended Eris, when Eris was only a new-forged Guardian, shaking in the aftermath of Twilight Gap. Eriana told her, _We can retake the Moon. We must._ Eriana made her believe.

Eris believes in her now, even when she is lost among the Darkness, blind and lit only by the memory of Eriana’s final glory as she died.

_We are Guardians. We fight the Darkness. No matter the price. No matter the cost. But to do that, we must live._

Long ago, Eriana told her that.

Eriana might despise her for this now, but Eris swallows the worms, swallows the darkness, and she opens three eyes and lives.

* * *

_Eris,_ says Toland, _Eris, what a name, a name for discord, a name for far cold orbits where no living thing should dare to go. I like this name._

Eris blinks three eyes at him and she likes nothing, nothing of the monster that is left of herself. But she has promised herself to live. To bring back knowledge to the Tower (and that’s a Warlock mission, the bugfuck crazy pursuit of knowledge, but the Warlock who led them here is dead and Eris is no longer fit to be a Hunter, so—)

So.

She listens to Toland. She learns his lore.

She changes.

* * *

It’s very easy to live among the Hive. To thrive among the Darkness. All you need to do is lose your light. Your courage, your hope. All you need to do is watch your fireteam die, one by one.

Vell Tarlowe, dying like a Titan, laughing among his foes.

Omar Agah, tortured to death, the Light ripped from his body.

Sai Mota, nearly cutting her way to freedom with Hunter cunning and the bones of the Acolytes she killed.

Eriana-3, struck down at the height of her final, most glorious Radiance.

All you need to do is watch, and turn away. And hide. That is all the Darkness wants.

* * *

But this is all it takes to spite the Darkness: remember them. Remember their names. Remember.

 _This is the world the Hive craves,_ Toland says to her before he leaves. _A universe creased by the edge of the sharpest sword._

Deep deep deep beneath the Hive, buried and choked and almost dead inside the Moon, Eris thinks: _The Darkness is not the sharpest sword._

Eris thinks that, and she claws her way out of the cocoon. She rips the thralls apart with her knife, her Hunter knife that she still has not lost and she runs, she crawls. She finds a way, and each bloody step out of the moon, for years and years as she looks for the way home, she remembers them.

Omar Agah, Sai Mota, Vell Tarlowe, Eriana-3, creepy fucking Toland himself and _Eris does not forget._

* * *

_The song is death. To hear it is to die. To know the words is mortal._

Eris heard the song, Eris knows the words, and Eris teaches them to the Guardians at the Tower. To Ikora and the Hidden and anyone who will listen, but most of all to that young Guardian who’s already made a name by facing the Black Garden.

There are some who would call the Vex more evil than the Hive. None would dare to call them more perverse.

Eris thinks that the Black Garden will do very well, very well indeed as a whetstone for the sword she means to send against Crota.

She thinks that, but still. When she hears of his fall—

That another six went down into the Pit, and all six of them returned—

That Crota is dead, Ir Yût the Deathsinger is dead (not become death incarnate, DEAD), that Crota son of Oryx ( _I SAW HIM KILL ERIANA)_ is dead beyond dead beyond dead and slaughtered with his own sword—

Eris gasps for breath. She grips the railing of the Tower. And she laughs as the Hive taught her, deep in her throat, a sound like the crawling of worms.

* * *

There is no Light left in Eris Morn. Her next death will be her last, and she doesn’t really regret it. She’s seen all the things that crawl out of death and beyond death and halfway into death, and she’s one of them, but she doesn’t want to be.

She has seen all those things.

She has seen, also:

Eriana-3, mechanical fingers clattering as she hacks the Vanguard computers. Vell Tarlowe, laughing in the Crucible as he dies landing another Fist of Havoc. Sai Mota, her grim face lit in a rare smile. Omar rolling his eyes as the rest of them. Toland the Shattered himself, sniggering into his cup, not realizing he snort-laughs like a pig.

Eris remembers, and this is something she has taken from the Hive perhaps, because the Hive does not forget. Sullen and furious and seething, the Hive never forgets. Neither does Eris.

The Hive is always whispering in her head, and so is Toland, but Eris has her own wisdom now. She has made her own answers.

_What if what if what if, shhh listen, what if YOU DIDN'T KNOW EVERYTHING, TOLAND?_

Eris looks at the new Guardians. Some of them have helped kill Crota. Some of them are trying to balance on a large purple ball.

All of them are filled with the Light, and with her three eyes plucked from the Darkness, Eris can see that as no one else can.

Eris looks, and she hopes, and she remembers.

(The Hive never forgets.)

**Author's Note:**

> I HAVE A LOT OF FEELINGS ABOUT ERIS.
> 
> This fic owes a lot to the Grimoire cards (obviously!) and includes a bunch of quotations/paraphrases. My main source was Planet Destiny's [compilation of Dark Below Grimoire cards.](http://planetdestiny.com/dark-below-grimore/)


End file.
